While I'm not a proponent of oil drilling short of some localized low level earthquake activity I would doubt that drilling is responsible for the more major recent earthquakes which have happened in areas known to be tectonically active.

Now there are plenty of other environmental issues with the oil industry, so I'm certainly not giving it a free pass...but large scale earthquakes are probably not its fault.

It really wouldn't surprise me - ecologically and geologically speaking, the planet is as delicately balanced as our bodies, and it only takes the smallest thing to send everything off-kilter.

I really have a hard time with that line of logic. What, exactly, is off-kilter? When it comes to the Earth, if there is anything that is consistent it is change in either small, unnoticeable ways or in really, really big ways. I certainly believe that humans leave an imprint in their environment but I'd have to be pressed pretty hard to believe that the Earth won't be able to recover from anything we do.

Regardless of all of our compounds, plastics, metals and gasses we're responsible for, they are still comprised of the elements naturally found here. When it's all said and done, if humans are ever extinct, the Earth will right itself just as if we had never existed in the first place. Chernobyl is an excellent example of this.

I'm with Stormy on this one. The Earth is gigantic and has a tremendous capacity for absorbing and sustaining itself. Scientists are absolutely clueless as to what causes major shifts in the Earth let alone relatively small things like earthquakes and twisters.

I agree; it may cause SUPER localized earthquakes, especially if there was some 'bubble' of earth that settled, but in the scheme of things a bit of drilling shouldn't affect the tectonic plates.

None the less, it's hard to tell what does and does not affect the shifting of those plates. It could be a super slow process, not at all related, or anything in between. The earth is one of those things that's hard to understand, especially because we've
a) been around for such a SUPER short period of time
and b) humans evolved at one of the most stable times on the earth EVER, in regards to extinction, global heating/cooling, and tectonic activity.

we just had 2 earthquakes today starting to worry a bit what do you think about this?

"USGS’s studies do not suggest that hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as 'fracking,' causes the increased rate of earthquakes. USGS’s scientists have found, however, that at some locations the increase in seismicity coincides with the injection of wastewater in deep disposal wells."

tl;dr The drilling itself, which utilizes thousands of gallons of water, does not cause earthquakes, but disposing of that water does cause earthquakes.